Monday, February 1, 2016

The Life of Frederick Douglass

One
of the most important and painfully honest narratives of slavery ever
written. Historians gush over "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as being a
precipitating, eye opener for Abolition of Slavery but this book - and
Douglas himself- was far more important:

Grade 9 Up-This classic text in both American literature and American
history is read by Pete Papageorge with deliberation and simplicity,
allowing the author's words to bridge more than 160 years to today's
listeners. Following a stirring preface by William Lloyd Garrison (who,
nearly 20 years after he first met Douglass, would himself lead the
black troops fighting from the North in the Civil War), the
not-yet-30-year-old author recounts his life's story, showing effective
and evocative use of language as well as unflinchingly examining many
aspects of the Peculiar Institution of American Slavery. Douglass
attributes his road to freedom as beginning with his being sent from the
Maryland plantation of his birth to live in Baltimore as a young boy.
There, he learned to read and, more importantly, learned the power of
literacy. In early adolescence, he was returned to farm work, suffered
abuse at the hands of cruel overseers, and witnessed abuse visited on
fellow slaves. He shared his knowledge of reading with a secret "Sunday
school" of 40 fellow slaves during his last years of bondage. In his
early 20's, he ran away to the North and found refuge among New England
abolitionists. Douglass, a reputed orator, combines concrete description
of his circumstances with his own emerging analysis of slavery as a
condition. This recording makes his rich work available to those who
might feel encumbered by the printed page and belongs as an alternative
in all school and public library collections.Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.